


Bottled

by The_Prince_of_Dots



Category: Thomas Sanders
Genre: Anxiety trusts no one, Claustrophobia, Communication Failure, Gen, Logan knows nothing but he's ready to find out, Minor Injuries, Panic Attacks, Patton knows more than he lets on, Princey saves the day, Serious Injuries, bottled emotions, phrases turned literal, pre Anxiety name reveal, the mindscape is a wild place full of many realms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 16:31:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12346437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Prince_of_Dots/pseuds/The_Prince_of_Dots
Summary: Bottled Emotions. What a silly phrase. At least, it certainly seems silly when you aren't an emotional trait who's currently trapped in a bottle. Virgil doesn't know why he's in a bottle, but he's definitely not happy about it.





	1. Chapter 1

Anxiety wasn’t quite sure on the how, the why, the when, or even the what, but he suddenly found himself trapped inside a large glass bottle. The suddenness of it, combined with the lack of knowledge on how it happened, led to the only natural conclusion: panicking.

Frantic, he looked for a way out. His brain felt fuzzy, and it was hard to think straight, but he looked around in the hopes that a solution would present itself. The bottle was lying on its side, and at one end, there was a cork. Since the bottle wasn’t big enough to stand up in, Anxiety crawled over to the corked opening. He tried shoving with his shoulder, but he didn’t have enough space to really do anything. Then, he tried moving so he could kick it, which put all his weight on the sloping edge, which tipped the bottle, which made him lose his balance. He crashed against the side of the bottle, and it rolled a bit before running into something else with a clink.

Anxiety sat up, and saw that he’d hit another bottle. The other bottle was upright and contained a hopeless-looking but still wearily-smiling Morality. The other gave a small wave as Anxiety finally noticed him.

“What’s going on?” Anxiety shouted at him. “How did we get here? Who did this? Is this Roman’s fault? I’m going to kill him if it is! How do we get out of here?”

Patton pointed at his ear and shook his head. He couldn’t hear Anxiety through the bottles. Anxiety tried to think of a solution. He searched his pockets, but he didn’t have anything to write with. This was stupid. He was just as useless as Ariel was, trying to communicate with the prince.

Wait.

He’d already discussed this.  _Learn to write. Or use sign language._ Thomas knew a little bit of sign language! Therefore, so did his sides!

_WHAT_ –Anxiety signed, before realizing he didn’t know the other signs for what he wanted to say. He thought a minute, trying to get his brain to focus, but he couldn’t come up with anything. He decided to spell it out instead.  _H-A-P-P-E-N-E-D?_

Patton looked up thoughtfully, like he was also trying to think of signs they knew. Then he quickly looked back at Anxiety and fumbled through some clumsy signs.  _T-O-M_ , he started, and then he made a ‘Y’ sign and shook it back and forth, pointing the outstretched fingers at himself and Anxiety.  _SAME_. Then he made a cup with one hand, seemed to pull something out with two fingers on the other hand and slapped his palm on top of the cup.  _SODA_.

Well. That didn’t make any sense. Patton was probably more confused by the sudden change than he was. Still, Anxiety tried to gain understanding. He shook his upturned palms gently again and raised an eyebrow.  _WHAT?_

Patton scowled in frustration. Then he tried again.  _T-H-O-M-A-S_ , he signed, and then stopped, looking at Anxiety as if to ask if he understood. Anxiety nodded.  _P-U-T_ , he stopped. Another nod. He pointed at Anxiety, mouthing ‘you,’ then pointed at himself, mouthing ‘me.’ Anxiety nodded again. Then Patton knocked on the wall of his bottle.

So apparently this was Thomas’s fault. But that didn’t make any sense. Sure, Thomas probably jumped at the chance to get rid of Anxiety, but he had zero reason to trap Patton anywhere. Patton was his source of _joy_. It had to be something else. Probably Roman’s fault. He hated Anxiety, and since he’d teamed up with Patton more and more in recent times, Roman probably had decided to get rid of both of them. By trapping them in sealed bottles. It  _was_  a creative solution. It couldn’t be Logic’s doing, because the logical solution would just be to kill him, and leave Patton out of it because keeping Thomas happy and moral was a logical way of ensuring a good future.

Anxiety suddenly had a thought. They probably put him in here to  _die_. The bottle was sealed. There were no holes in the top. They meant for him to run out of air and die. He started panicking worse. He knew he should control his breathing, conserve oxygen, but he couldn’t control his short, ragged breaths. He started desperately kicking the walls as hard as he could, hoping to break free. The walls instead seemed to close around him, making the bottle smaller. Sobbing in terror, Anxiety started throwing himself against the glass, hoping that the full impact of his weight might shatter it. He did this until he was too exhausted to get up. Then he laid there, thinking  _Oh, God, this is the end, I’m going to die I’m going to die I’m going to really die in here_  over and over.

Time passed, and the panic eventually wore itself out. He may have also fallen asleep at some point, he wasn’t sure. What he did know, however, was that he was still alive. Somehow, there was still enough oxygen in the bottle to breathe.

However, there was no longer enough room to move around very much. The walls had closed in, or at least gotten thicker. Glass now cocooned him in rippled waves, and he couldn’t even see where the cork had been or out to where Morality’s bottle was. The rippled glass gave the whole experience an eerie feel of being underwater.

Anxiety wasn’t sure how long he’d been there. Minutes? Years? It was impossible to tell, and he didn’t have a phone on him to check. He wished he could teleport to his room and get it. Then, realizing that, in theory, he could, he closed his eyes, focused on his room and willed himself there.

Agonizing pain everywhere told him that he could not. He opened his eyes to find that not only was he still in the bottle, but the walls had closed in again. His knees had been pressed toward his chest, arms pinned to his sides, all of him curled up painfully and no room to move at all. He lay there thinking, but no solutions presented themselves. The pain made it hard to think. He waited, taking deep breaths, hoping it would subside. It got worse with each passing second. He had to teleport again. Either he would get out, or he would die. Either way, he couldn’t stand the pain any longer. Since his room was out of the equation, he thought of somewhere neutral.  _The living room in Thomas’s apartment._  He squeezed his eyes shut and put all his energy into getting there.

He heard a shattering noise.

He felt himself falling.

Anxiety opened his eyes just in time to catch himself from falling onto the pieces of some glass figurines that he’d just knocked over in Thomas’s living room.  _What–?_

“Ugh, seriously Anxiety? You’re gone all day, only to show up and break things?” He looked up at the sound of Princey’s voice. At first, he saw only Patton, who, for some reason was looking at him with great concern. Then he turned to spot Roman, who just looked annoyed.

“I was sleeping,” he said. Was he sleeping? He couldn’t remember, but he felt exhausted and his brain was feeling sluggish, so probably. “Where’s Logan?”

“He’s calming Thomas down from an anxiety attack that _you_  just brought upon him,” Roman said.

“Well it’s clearly  _your_ fault because _I_  never show up without a reason,” Anxiety snapped.

“Your entire existence is without reason! He was doing fine all day, no stupid feelings, not worried about anything–I don’t see why you had to come along and ruin it!”

“Enough!” Patton snapped. Great, now Dad was mad at him too. “Roman, take a walk. You aren’t helping the situation either.”

With a huff, the royal disappeared into the mindscape.

“Are you okay, Anxiety?” Patton asked gently. Was he  _not_  mad?

“Like I’m going to let Sir Stinks-a-Lot ruin my mood,” Anxiety scoffed, keeping how shocked and mildly alarmed he was at Patton’s concern hidden.

“Are you hurt?” Patton asked. Oh, right. The figurines. Patton was probably worried that he’d cut himself and was going to bleed onto the carpet.

He checked his hands. They weren’t bleeding. “I’m fine,” he said. Patton was still looking at him with concern. “…but I am tired, so I think I’m gonna go back to sleep. Bye!” He sank out, unnerved by how concerned for his welfare Patton was.

Once the darker trait had disappeared, Patton sighed and walked over to start cleaning up the broken glass. It seemed as if Anxiety had forgotten about the bottles again. With as often as it happened, one would think that he’d remember the experience at least once. Someday he’d like to get the bottles broken open immediately, instead  of waiting for Anxiety to figure out how to warp the bottles once more. At the very least, the boy could tell him the trick to doing it. He never knew what happened after Anxiety started kicking the glass, since the bottle always went rippled and opaque.

Oh well. There was always next time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the Becoming a Cartoon video, Anxiety is angry. However, he should know that bad things happen when he gets emotional.

So he was the bad guy again, huh? The villain? All he did was agree with Logan, but  _he_ , Anxiety, was the spoilsport. At least  _he_ understood consent. Would he have changed Patton into a Terrence, or a Talyn, if Patton hated it? No. Would he have given Thomas the power to fly, only to suddenly rescind it for drama if he knew Thomas hated flying? No. But Anxiety was the bad guy. It didn’t count if the  _villain_  didn’t want to participate.

Anxiety was  _unbelievably_  angry. As he stormed through his part of the mindscape, even the shadows feared to come near. He knew he should calm down before something bad happened. He was one of the emotional traits, and when  _he_  was mad,  _Thomas_  was affected. Something would happen. He wasn’t sure what, but something. Probably Prince Backhanded Compliments would come after him. He screeched in anger, and swung a fist at the empty air.

It came into contact with glass. After howling in both anger  _and_  pain, Anxiety looked around. He was now in some sort of upright bottle. Rather than shattering, the spot where his fist had connected with the bottle seemed to be growing reinforcements. In a matter of seconds, there was a sort of blister of rippled glass where he’d punched the wall.

Then it hit him. He was an emotion. In a bottle. A bottled emotion. How very  _creative._

“ _ROMAN!_ ” he yelled, putting the proper force and then some behind the word to summon the trait. He then immediately regretted his action when he was nearly impaled upon arrival. A sword appeared a hair’s breadth away from his neck and imbedded itself in the glass behind him. He froze. Roman froze. It took them a moment to process what had happened.

“What the flip-flopping shape-changing crown of Loki do you think you’re doing?” Roman shouted.

“Me?!” Anxiety asked, “You’re the one who almost  _killed_ me, and you’re asking what  _I’m_  doing?”

“Certainly! You shouldn’t summon people without warning them first, you never know what they could be doing! Honestly, haven’t you heard of consent?”

Anxiety couldn’t tell if the bottle had actually gotten darker or if it was just his vision clouding. He didn’t have to move closer to get into Roman’s face–the bottle was fairly small–but he did lean forward a bit to make his point. “Have  _I_  heard of consent?! Have you?! You and the others  _summon me_  without consent,  _move me_  without consent,  _change my form_  without consent,  _make me fly_  without consent, and when you get sick of me, you  _shove me into a bottle_ –all without  _my_ consent!”

“Oh, you think this predicament is  _my_  fault?” Roman must have stepped forward, because now their foreheads were pressed together and their chests were probably an inch apart.

“Of course it’s your fault, _Mr. Creative_. And now you’re even touching me without consent. Back off!” Anxiety tried shoving him away, but Roman didn’t move, and Anxiety was already backed against the wall.

“I’d love to, but it seems like  _you_  have somehow made the bottle smaller,” Roman snapped. “So now who’s fault is it?”

“Still yours. If you hadn’t put me here in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this predicament!”

“Stop shouting, you’re making my ears hurt,” Roman said. “And anyway, traps? Not my style. And what would I know about trapping emotions anyway? Patton seems to be a more likely culprit in this than I.”

Anxiety’s eyes widened, then he scowled. “He wouldn’t,” he said.

“No? This seems like a very effective time-out, which I’ve heard is a parental punishment of choice for unruly toddlers.”

Anxiety went to move his hands in a sarcastic gesture, but smacked the suddenly-much-closer wall instead. Two glass blisters formed immediately. “See? The bottle only reacts to you,” Roman said. “I would suggest calming down.”

“Impossible to do with  _you_  here,” Anxiety grumbled.

“Then I shall gladly leave you,” Roman said. He snapped his fingers. Immediately, they were shoved into each other, hard. Anxiety’s nose hit Roman’s eye, while one of Roman’s hands slammed into Anxiety’s side. Roman swore. Anxiety didn’t swear, but he felt the same sentiment. They squirmed until they were basically in a hug position, heads next to each other and hands pressed against the wall behind the other.

“Only reacts to me, huh?” Anxiety asked sarcastically.

“Shut up.”

“Unless you have some brilliant idea as to how to get us out, I don’t think I will.”

“Uhh,” Roman said, trying to look around. All he could see was rippled glass and Anxiety’s thick mass of dark hair, some of which promptly got caught in his still “uhh”ing mouth. He quickly attempted to spit it out, and Anxiety made a note of disgust and did his best to move as far away as possible. Then, Roman spotted a glint.

“My sword!” he exclaimed, automatically snapping his hand toward it. He hit his elbow against the wall behind him, and squeaked as numbness shot up his arm. He’d hit his funny bone, which didn’t strike him as humorous at the moment.

“Now who needs to stop shouting?”

Roman would have snapped something witty or deserved again, but instead he took a deep breath. This was completely and utterly Anxiety’s fault, but he needed the emotional trait on his side in order to get out of here. “Anxiety,” he said, in a quiet, calm tone. “My sword has already halfway gone through the side of this nefarious trap. I, obviously, cannot reach the hilt, however, your hand is already near it. I believe if you calmly wield it, you will be able to slice through the bottle.”

“Is it going to burn me or something if I touch it? Y’know, since I’m a  _villain?_ ”

“ _That_  was an emotionally charged statement,” Roman said, repeating something he’d heard Logan say once or twice to get Anxiety to chill out. “And, no, it won’t burn you. It’s not magic.”

Anxiety frowned and gripped the grip. He tried to wiggle it. Then he tried pulling it back toward him in the hope that it would slide further into the glass. Then he adjusted his grip and tried again.

“It’s not working,” he grumbled.

“Try using both hands,” Roman said.

“I–okay,” Anxiety said. “Try being smaller.”

“I shall shapeshift into Talyn to facilitate that.” In a second, it was done. However, he had not realized that Anxiety had been leaning against him as a support while he tried to move the sword until he ended up with a face full of black hoodie falling into him. He let out an indignant squeak.

In spite of himself, Anxiety snickered a bit as he moved to let Roman breathe again.

“Don’t laugh at me!” Roman snapped. “I am not funny!”

At that, Anxiety let out a short guffaw. Both of them fell as the glass suddenly retracted a bit. The retracting stopped as they both let out a panicked shout. Roman was now on the floor of the bottle. Anxiety was now on top of him. He scrambled to move with a “At least there’s more room now,” but Roman stopped that movement by grabbing his shirt.

“Anxiety, we’ve got it!” Roman said. “You laughed, and the glass retracted! Positive emotions counteract the growth!”

“If that’s the case, we’re going to be stuck here forever,” Anxiety said. “I think the sword’s a better idea.”

“Oh, come on! You were just laughing! How hard will it be for you to do it again?”

“You said it yourself, you’re not funny,” Anxiety said, scowling once more.

The Darkling Thrush had a point. Roman was the creative one, but jokes were not his division.

However, there  _was_  something that was his division that made  _everyone_  happy. He pulled Anxiety closer and grinned. “I know how to make you feel positive emotions,” he said.

“I swear, if you try to kiss me, or–or anything like that, we’re  _both_ dying in this stupid bottle.”

Roman scowled and shoved Anxiety away. “I’m running out of ideas here, Half-Hearted Prince.”

“The sword,” Anxiety said. “We still haven’t tried that one.”

“Fine, try the sword.” Then he thought of something. “Actually, I’m probably stronger than you. Let me try the sword.”

They awkwardly shifted around so that Anxiety was the one sitting on the floor so Roman could stand up. He shapeshifted back into his typical form, noting how much less room there was now that he was no longer small and non threatening. He carefully moved his arms so that they wouldn’t painfully come into contact with the glass any more, and gripped the sword. Then, he pushed with all his might.

The sword slid forward as though it was greased with butter. Roman crashed into the other side of the bottle, and also Anxiety’s shoulder. “Hey!” Anxiety protested.

“Hay is for horses,” Roman said. “And it worked, so don’t comp–” he stopped talking as he noticed that his sword was now stuck. No matter how much he pulled, the sword would no longer budge.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. This was fan-flipping-tastic.

“Well,” he said. “We tried the sword, and now it is stuck. Any more bright ideas?”

Anxiety shrugged hopelessly. “For positive emotions, we need Patton. To summon Patton, we would need more space in the bottle. To get more space in the bottle, we need positive emotions.”

“Yes, it’s a vicious cycle,” Roman said. “And there’s still the possibility that this could be Patton’s doing.”

“I still don’t believe it,” Anxiety said, though there was clear uncertainty in his voice.

“I am in agreement,” Roman said.

“That’s not what you said earlier,” Anxiety said.

“That is correct, however now that I think about it, this trap seems too complex and vicious for Patton’s taste. The bottle is clearly made to trap negative emotions and prevent escape, however, it also gets smaller and presses in as your negative emotions heighten, presumably until death.”

“And Patton is the least likely of any of us to try and kill someone or something,” Anxiety said, finishing Roman’s line of reasoning.

Suddenly, the walls expanded just a tiny bit. Roman wouldn’t have even noticed if he hadn’t been leaning most of his body weight against the wall. He tried to wiggle his sword free. It was still very stuck. Before Anxiety could reverse what he’d done by overthinking something, Roman tried to think of a different topic of conversation. “Let’s talk through what happened,” he said. “Maybe if I understand the circumstances behind how you got trapped here, I can think of a way out.”

“Nothing much to tell,” Anxiety mumbled. “I was mad, then I took a walk, then suddenly, I was here.”

“Where were you walking?”

“My part of the mindscape.”

“Ah, the nightmare realm. Are you absolutely certain, then, that this isn’t a nightmare illusion?”

“Positive,” Anxiety said. “None of the shadows came anywhere near me. They’re afraid of me when I’m really mad.”

“How mad were you?”

“Really mad.”

“That’s not descriptive.”

“Really, really mad.”

Roman sighed in irritation, then changed back into Talyn so there was enough room for him to sit down too. He slid down the wall and landed with a thump. “So you were really really mad. About what?”

“The video.”

“The last one? I thought it was very enjoyable.”

“I didn’t.”

“Why?”

Anxiety made a vague hand motion that seemed to indicate the thought,  _Seriously?_  “Did you listen to me at all during it?”

“Mostly you were complaining, so I tuned you out.”

This time the hand moved in an _I-give-up_  sort of way. “That. That right there is what I was mad about.”

“Why? You complain all the time. At this point, your complaints usually aren’t that important.” Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say, as Roman was suddenly shoved six inches closer to Anxiety.

“Yeah, whatever,” Anxiety snapped. “This is stupid anyway. You don’t actually care, you just want to get out. I’m taking a nap.”

Anxiety pulled his knees closer to his chest, then crossed his arms on top and buried his head behind them. At first his breathing was purposefully rhythmic, as though he was counting the seconds of each one, but eventually they softened and some of the tension in Anxiety’s shoulders disappeared.

Roman was bemused by the whole interaction. He didn’t understand why Anxiety was so upset. He  _did_  complain about everything, and it wasn’t like Roman was the only one who tuned him out. Patton straight-up ignored Anxiety most of the time, Thomas cut him off when he complained, and Logan only listened when whatever Anxiety was complaining about would strengthen his arguments. And even with all that, Anxiety  _still_  managed to complain and be heard. Honestly, he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard anything from Anxiety’s mouth that  _wasn’t_  a complaint. He shouldn’t be surprised that no one wanted to listen to him.

However, that was Roman’s point of view, and Roman’s point of view hadn’t gotten them anywhere near freedom yet. This would be so much easier with Patton. Patton overreacted to things just as much as Anxiety did, but at least he could provide an “I’m upset and here’s why,” rather than a “Something is vaguely wrong but I’m going to be mad about it anyway.”

He had to rationalize his way through this. He couldn’t just come up with a creative way for Anxiety to be happy, no, that never worked. He had to figure out why Anxiety was bothered, and then find a way to destroy the source of unhappiness. First the facts: Anxiety had said that he was mad about them not listening to him in the last video. However, he hadn’t really been paying attention to him, instead focusing on putting ideas in his head and reveling in how _awesome_  it was to be a cartoon. He tried to remember something, anything that Anxiety had said. Let’s see–

–something, something “Logan’s a Debbie Downer too, but sure, I’m the bad guy” or something

–agreeing with him about ignoring Logic in the future, but sarcastically

–hating flying

–something about being the bad guy again, to which he had responded “Everyone loves the villain!”

–something about flying again

–general complaining about the moral of the video

–complimenting him on his pale joke, but that may have also been sarcastic

He pulled out a notebook from a pocket (Logan wasn’t the only one with ideas to write down) and put down everything that he could remember from the video. After that, he thought about everything Anxiety had said while they were in the bottle.

–He’d yelled a lot about consent.

–He hadn’t wanted to touch Roman’s sword because he was afraid it would burn him.

–He’d laughed at Roman and then said he wasn’t funny.

–He refused to be positive, but he also refused to believe that Patton was responsible for this.

–He said he was really mad about the video, and then he got mad when Roman said that he hadn’t been listening to Anxiety.

Once he’d written all of those down, he needed to analyze the themes and determine what was the most important. He suddenly thought he heard Thomas calling his name, but he tuned it out. It was his mind playing tricks. Thomas wouldn’t be needing him for a couple days at least, and knew better than to call any of the sides for at least 24 hours after completing a video. They needed time to unwind from the stress of all being together.

He wrote down  _Villain???_  because it had been mentioned three times, but he wasn’t quite sure of the context. He also wrote down  _flying_  because it was mentioned more than once, and  _consent_ because Anxiety had yelled about it for probably a whole minute.

He suddenly realized that his handwriting was very shaky. Thrown off his groove, he also suddenly noticed that the entire bottle was shaking, as though they were in an earthquake, or like the bottle was about to explode. He kicked Anxiety to wake him up. Anxiety flinched awake, and was immediately alert. “What did you  _do?_ ” he yelled, panicked. Even with the sudden emotion, the walls didn’t react. They were too busy shaking.

“I don’t know, but don’t worry, I’ll protect you!” Roman said, pushing off the wall to cover Anxiety’s body with his own. As soon as they were in contact though, they were falling. They shrieked, but hit the ground after only a few feet.

They were in Thomas’s living room. So were Logan and Patton. And Thomas. All three were looking down at them.

“ _Get. Off._ ” Anxiety said, low and dangerous. Roman scrambled up, pulling Anxiety to his feet also.

“Where have you two  _been?_ ” Patton asked. He sounded worried, for some reason.

“None of your business!” Anxiety snapped. 

He didn’t want the others to know. Why? But they’d ask questions. Roman had to save him and his bad interrogation skills.

“I don’t see what Anxiety’s so embarrassed about,” Roman said smoothly. “We were just monster hunting in the Nightmare Realm.”

Everyone looked at him incredulously, so none of them noticed Anxiety also giving him a  _wtf???_  look.

“You never take anyone else on monster hunts,” Logan said.

“I thought he might be a useful guide, since it is his home realm. He is not, by the way. Led us right into a trap. We were only gone for a few hours though, so what does it matter? Why have you summoned us? Did something occur post-production that needs my creativity?”

“You’ve been gone for  _days,_ ” Thomas said.

Roman’s smile faltered a bit. “Excuse me?”

“We haven’t seen you two since Friday,” Logan said. “It’s Tuesday.”

“You missed the Tonys  _and_  the next vlog!” Patton said.

“ _What?_ ” Roman said. “I can’t believe this! I have to get to the Library of Memories!” He snapped out, trusting that Anxiety could handle this now that he’d come up with an excuse.

There was a pause after Roman left. Then, Logan raised an eyebrow at Anxiety. “Monster hunting?”

“Was there a  _reason_  you summoned us?” Anxiety snapped.

“We were worried about you!” Patton said.

“Yeah, well, Roman’s still being his typical stupid self, and I’m still here, being the bad guy. Nothing unusual. You should leave the worrying to me, anyway. You’re not any good at it.” With that, Anxiety sunk out.

Patton and Logan shared an equally baffled look. Thomas asked, “Does anyone else feel like they missed something important?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Logan notices that no one is acting normal, and decides that it’s up to him to find out why. Warning, an anxiety attack within this chapter.

Something was up. Logan wanted to know what.

It was perfectly normal for Roman to go monster hunting. He would disappear sometimes for days, off on some silly quest to slay a dragon or save a princess. It was something Roman did to relax and to make the creative part of the mindscape foster ideas more easily.

It was also perfectly normal for Anxiety to disappear for a day or two with no explanation. Since they were aspects of Thomas’s mind, food and drink, while valued, were unnecessary. When he was annoyed at one or more of them, which was often, or he was anxious about something in Thomas’s life, which was also often, Anxiety would forego joining them at the typical mealtimes. This was especially true after a video where the four of them were forced to be together.

What was not normal, however, was the two of them doing anything  _together_ , especially over the course of multiple days and especially after a video together. While Logan and Roman were natural opponents, Roman and Anxiety  _hated_  each other. A video was practically  _incomplete_  if it didn’t have Roman saying some version of “I  _do not_  like you,” to Anxiety at least once. He knew for a fact that if Roman wanted to hunt things in the Nightmare Realm, he would not want Anxiety to go along. The absolute most Logan could see Roman doing was telling Anxiety that he was there, and warning Anxiety not to become a target. While Patton delighted in making misleading compliments, Roman seemed to gain pleasure from inflicting misleading insults on Anxiety. Anxiety, while not nearly as creative with insults, certainly didn’t mince words when it came to telling Roman exactly what he thought of him. The  _only_  kindness Logan had ever seen between the two was when Roman had let Anxiety borrow his stuffed rabbit, and that was quickly rescinded when Anxiety did his best not to give it back. There was absolutely no circumstance that Logan could think of that could put the two of them together for more than a few hours at most without causing a panic attack or a literal mental breakdown that would damage the mindscape and force Logan and Patton to intervene.

To further enhance the oddity, Patton wasn’t being helpful. Usually, if something strange was happening in the mindscape, Logan and Patton would discuss it so in-depth with all the clues available (and all speculations where evidence was scarce) that one could mistake it for a PTA meeting. When Logan had mentioned his concerns and brought up the relevant behaviors this time though, Patton had ‘hmmm’ed and said, “I’m sure that they’ll tell us what’s going on when they’re comfortable.” That was the whole discussion. This, of course, led Logan to speculate that Patton had some idea of what was going on, but it involved the finicky, soft, or fragile sort of emotions that had to be carefully dealt with.

Wait a minute.

Finicky, soft, fragile emotions.

Suddenly spending a lot of time together after hating each other for so long.

Oh dear.

They were in love.

 

Roman was sitting in the Library of Memories. He’d told them that he was going to catch up on the last few days, so he didn’t expect that they would be bothering him anytime soon. He’d watched the Tonys, but figured he’d catch up later on everything else. While he had needed a break from anything Anxiety related, now it was time to get back to work, and this was the perfect place to do it.

Since Thomas’s parents had taken so many home videos growing up, all of the memories took the form of carefully labelled VHS tapes, arranged in chronological order. Therefore, the term “Library of Memories” was a bit misleading, since it was really more like the “Blockbuster of Memories.” However, Logan had been the one who named it, and there was no way he was going to call it the “Blockbuster of Memories.”

Logan had also invented the machine to play the memories, which looked like a desktop computer, except where there was usually a slot for CDs, there was a spot for VHS tapes. You could either play the memory like it was a Youtube video, or you could click the fullscreen button and actually relive the memory. It was a pretty neat contraption, all in all.

Roman had just brought the tapes of the last two videos to the memory player when Logan showed up. “Would you say that you and Anxiety have been getting along better lately than in the past?” Logan asked, not even bothering to say hello. Then, actually looking at him, Logan asked, “Also, why the sudden affinity for Talyn’s shape?”

“I’m sorry, what is going on?” Roman asked, immediately suspicious and also wondering how Anxiety could have  _possibly_  messed up Roman’s  _airtight_  excuse. He didn’t change shape, realizing that it would be suspicious if it looked like he just  _forgot_  that he had been in Talyn’s form since he had left Anxiety. If he stayed the way he was and didn’t answer, Logan would chalk it up to a  _creative mood_.

“Just answer the question, yes or no? Are you getting along better?”

“Did he say something that would have led you to that conclusion?”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“I am not!” Roman said, vehemently denying the completely true accusation. “I’m just asking my own questions. Why are you here, Logan? I’m busy.”

“I am conducting research, and part of that research needs the answer as to whether you two are getting along better!” Logan was getting annoyed, and annoyance brought more questions. Best to just get this over with.

“I would say no,” Roman said, thinking about what happened in the bottle. “In fact, I would say we are getting along worse.”

“And why would you say that?”

“Why don’t you ask Anxiety? I’m _busy_.” Anxiety would probably say something about how annoying he was. If Anxiety  _hadn’t_  messed up Roman’s excuse already, then this wouldn’t either. And if he had, well, Anxiety knew more about what was going on than Roman did.

“Anxiety has closed off the Nightmare Realm. I can’t teleport in.” Roman almost screamed. He was  _busy_. Why was Logan the only one who couldn’t take a hint?

“If you teleport to my palace, the portrait to the right of the Danny DeVito portrait will take you straight there, regardless of whether the Nightmare Realm is blocked off or not. The password is ‘anxiety.’”

“Why do you have a secret entrance to the Nightmare Realm?”

“Go  _away,_  Logic.”

He heard Logan’s quiet steps recede.  _Finally_. Now he could start figuring out what was up with Anxiety, and by extension, what that bottle trap had been all about. Before he did though, he snapped his fingers and returned to his own shape.  _Ah, much better_.

Outside the library, Logan smirked. In and of itself, having a secret tunnel to the Nightmare Realm didn’t mean that Roman and Anxiety were dating, but it did add on to the small pile of evidence that Logan had collected so far. Now he just had to collect enough clues to make it an airtight case.

Patton paced back and forth in his bedroom, trying to determine his next steps. He was almost certain that the reason Anxiety was gone for four days was due to the bottles, but at the same time, this had been so  _different_  from the previous times. Usually Patton and Anxiety were trapped inside the bottles for a day at most, and that was usually only during times that Thomas  _really_  needed them trapped, like at a convention where he didn’t want to get anxious or start crying under any circumstances. And sure, Patton could see it  _maybe_  for the Tonys, but if that was the case, why had Patton not been trapped? And why had Anxiety stayed trapped for several days after? And what did Roman have to do with it? Roman wasn’t an emotion. He had definitely been there with Anxiety, and for some reason felt the need to lie about it. That’s what bothered Patton the most, that they lied about it. That meant that both of them remembered whatever happened, and they chose to say nothing.

Patton was conflicted. On one hand, he felt like he deserved to know at least the basics of what happened, since he  _was_  the other emotional trait and the bottles affected him  _directly_. On the other hand, it was immoral to force someone to spill their secrets, and Anxiety had enough trouble trusting them as it was.

He flopped facedown on his bed and groaned. He wished he could consult Logan about this, but he’d promised himself that he’d keep the bottles a secret until Anxiety remembered them and they could talk about them together. After all, Patton still didn’t really know much about them. He just assumed that Thomas used them when he didn’t want emotions. For all Patton knew, Logan had created them to make sure that the mindscape stayed balanced and wasn’t overrun with emotion.

Whatever decision he made, he had to make it fast. If Logan  _didn’t_ know about the bottles, he was certain to get curious. After all, no one in the mindscape was acting natural at the moment. While Logan wasn’t good at emotions or slang, he was very good at observation, and could easily tell when something was off. If Roman and Anxiety hadn’t already tipped him off, Patton’s feeble attempt at trying to dissuade Logan’s curiosity definitely would have.

There was really no other option. In order to prevent disaster, Patton was going to have to get Anxiety to talk to him. However, he needed to be diplomatic and gentle about it. If Anxiety and Roman were lying about it, that meant that they were suspicious of the others or they were embarrassed about what happened. He’d have to get Anxiety to let his guard down. He needed Anxiety to be in a cooperative mood.

It was time to bake cookies.

Anxiety was tearing through his house, trying to find anything that might explain who was behind the bottle traps and if he had ever encountered them before but for some reason forgot about it. He had an awful memory sometimes. He tried to help fix it by putting sticky note reminders everywhere, but the shadows would move or hide them. The Nightmares never entered his house, but sometimes pesky Fears and Insecurities found their way in and ruined things.

Somehow, he wasn’t nervous. The task at hand gave him a strange sense of calm. All he had to do was find a sign, something that would lead him to an answer. The funny thing was, he was almost certain he would find one. He just had to keep looking. He slipped a sharpie into his pocket as he searched. Any clues he found, he was going to write on his arm. No chance of losing them then.

His sense of calm was destroyed in an instant when the door of his house crashed open. “ _What the f–_ ”

“Anxiety!” Logan called out.

“How did you get here?!” Anxiety snapped. He’d sealed off his part of the mindscape.  _No one_  should be able to get in.

The Fears and Insecurities were riled up. They paced back and forth in the dark corners and slithered under the furniture, changing shape just slowly enough to be entrancing and hypnotizing if you looked for more than just a moment. Logan was staring at them, seemingly oblivious to the question Anxiety had just asked.

Anxiety considered letting Logan stare while he went back to work, but he knew that the Fear would probably get bigger and take on an actual shape if he didn’t do something. He snapped his fingers in front of Logan’s nose. “Hey! It’s rude to break into someone’s house and stare at the pets.”

Logan turned to Anxiety, but it took him a few moments to actually snap out of it. “Apologies,” he said at last. “I’ve never seen one of those before.”

“Why are you here?” Anxiety said, not giving Logan the chance to get off topic. “You’d better have a  _really_  good reason, because I blocked this area off and you’re still here.”

“I’m conducting research, and I need your input.”

Anxiety suddenly had a horrible thought. What if it was Logan behind the bottles, as part of some sort of twisted experiment to figure out how the emotions worked? What if Patton was next? A trap that reacted based on emotional input was  _exactly_  the sort of thing Logan might devise. He’d probably been watching the whole thing, and when Anxiety had introduced the rogue element of Roman, it had interfered with Logan’s data. He was probably here to conduct more experiments.

“Get lost,” Anxiety said. He’d tried to make it sound peevish, but the words had come out small and nervous instead. He tried to take a step back, and fell over. A Fear had curled around his feet. He kicked it off. His worries didn’t lessen, a troubling sign that they might not be unfounded.

“Anxiety, are you alright?” Logan asked, concerned. There were several reactions he had expected in response to his request. Blatant fear was not one of them.

“I-I said get out!” Anxiety stuttered. Did emotion trigger the trap? He had to stay calm.  _Stay calm stay calm stay calm stay calm stay calm stay calm_. He saw Logan, whose eyes were wide, who was saying something that Anxiety couldn’t make out. Logan was approaching him.  _Stay back stay back stay back stay back_. No.  _Stay calm. Stay calm_. He felt Patton, from somewhere else in the mindscape. An invitation? He accepted.

Anxiety stumbled suddenly into the living room of Patton’s house. Patton, seeing the state that Anxiety was in, dropped the pan of cookies and rushed toward him. “Anxiety. Anxiety, breathe. You’re okay. In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four.” Patton continued counting, getting Anxiety to breathe in step. He could  _not_  have an attack now. Thomas was out on the town with an acquaintance. Any negative emotions he felt would  _immediately_  be bottled. Patton  _had_ to calm Anxiety down.

Patton felt a ripple in the mindscape. He saw Anxiety look at something behind him, eyes going wide. Someone put a hand on Patton’s shoulder–

–and both of them suddenly fell, landing on a glass floor. Patton immediately tried to stand up, only to hit his head and crash back down. He looked around. He was in some sort of sideways bottle, like the ones that ships were in. What was going on?

“Where are we?” Logan asked. Logan was here too, sliding from his prone position to sitting cross-legged.

“I’m not sure,” Patton said. “This feels familiar, but my brain feels fuzzy and I can’t think of when I’ve been here before.”

“There’s another one,” Logan said, pointing. “It looks like Anxiety is inside.”

Patton looked to where Logan was pointing. There was an upright bottle a few feet away. Anxiety was sitting in the middle of it, clutching his hair and curled up in what was clearly the beginning of an attack. He seemed to be calming himself down though, as Patton could see his lips moving like he was counting. What looked like frost was curling around the glass of Anxiety’s bottle.

“I wonder why his bottle is doing that,” Logan said. “Ours isn’t doing that.”

“His always does that,” Patton answered.

“This has happened before?”

“I…I don’t know. Maybe?”

Logan’s raised his eyebrows. “Your sudden memory problems are concerning. Is this a sudden change? Did Thomas do something to confuse you?”

“I don’t know! I can’t remember!” Patton started nervously tapping his fingers on the glass floor, racking his brain for clues. What had he just been doing? Had something unusual occurred?

“Patton, look!” Patton looked at Logan, who was looking at Patton’s hand. He followed the other’s gaze, only to see that the same kind of frost was rippling out from where he’d been tapping.

“Well, that’s neat,” Patton said, now more confused than nervous. He tapped a clear section of glass. Nothing happened. “Weird.”

Logan tapped at the glass too. Nothing happened for him, either. Patton looked over at Anxiety’s bottle. Even there, the frost had stopped moving. Only the bottom foot or so of the bottle had been affected.

“Why are you here?” Patton asked suddenly. “You aren’t an emotion.”

“Is this bottle only for emotions?” Logan asked. Then, realizing what he said, he said, “Oh. I suppose that would make sense. You’re currently a phrase, turned literal. You’re a–”

“Shh! Anxiety’s talking!” Patton said, staring out of the bottle. “What?” he called. “What did you say?”

Logan looked over. Anxiety was no longer panicking. He was pointing at his ear, and shaking his head. He couldn’t hear Patton.

Patton was about to yell louder, but Logan put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t shout,” he said. “I have a marker.”

He pulled out a dry erase marker from his pants pocket. “Why do you just happen to have that?” Patton asked.

Logan looked at him like he was daft. “I’m a teacher,” he said. “I always have one on me.” He started writing, making the letters backwards so Anxiety could read them.  _WHAT’S GOING ON?_

“You can write backwards?” Patton asked.

“Can’t you?” Logan asked, not paying much attention. Anxiety was writing back, using a black sharpie.

 _YOU don’t know?_  Anxiety wrote. Logan was confused. Was he supposed to know? Maybe the message was written for Patton.

Underneath his first message, Logan wrote  _PAT’S MEMORY IS CONFUSED. SUDDEN CHANGE._

Anxiety scowled. Then he underlined the word  _YOU_.

“Me?” Logan asked. “Why would he think I know about this?” He gave a confused shrug towards Anxiety.

Anxiety countered with a disbelieving look and started scribbling.  _Didn’t invent it?_

Logan shook his head. Anxiety narrowed his eyes.

“I don’t think he believes you,” Patton said.

“Why not? What purpose would I have for lying about one of my inventions? Furthermore, what purpose would I have for human-sized bottles that only sometimes turn frosted when touched?”

“I guess your answer was met with a  _frosty_  reception.”

“Stop.” Logan looked around. If Anxiety wasn’t going to be helpful, he’d have to draw his own conclusions. He saw that at one end of the bottle, there was an opening that was sealed with a large cork. He crawled over to it, and tried to push the cork out, first with outstretched arms, then with his shoulder. When that didn’t work, he tried his legs. Nothing.

“Let me try,” Patton said. He repeated the process, with similar results. After several minutes of trying, he gave up with a sigh. “Well, it looks like we’re really  _cork_ screwed.”

“ _Patton_.”

“Aww, come on, Teach! Don’t make me _bottle up_  my jokes!”

“I am going to scream,” Logan said, adjusting his glasses. If this was how things were going to be, he was in for a long day.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has bad communication skills and no one is quite sure what’s going on. Warnings: verbal fights, physical injuries, forcibly making someone sleep

Anxiety was trapped in a bottle,  _again_ , and this time, he was alone and ignored. Like a villain, of course. Patton and Logan had somehow ended up in a bottle right next to him, which he didn’t understand. Somehow, Logan appeared to know nothing about the bottles, and whether or not Patton knew anything was unclear. Apparently, the bottle counted as a “sudden change” for Patton and made him confused. It didn’t affect Anxiety that way though, so he wasn’t sure if he believed it or not.

They had talked to him for a couple minutes, using a marker that Logan had, but then ignored him in favor of talking to each other and trying to push the cork out of the bottle. It wasn’t working. What really sold Anxiety on the fact that Logan didn’t know what was going on was how intently he was trying to get out and how increasingly frustrated he was getting. If Logan had built the trap, he would have already gotten out by now. Especially considering how red his face was getting, Patton was either flirting or telling jokes, both of which had a tendency to irritate Logan.

So Logan didn’t know what was going on, Roman didn’t know what was going on, and Patton either didn’t know what was going on or he was stupid enough to get caught in his own trap. Personally, Anxiety was betting on the former. Doing that, however, meant that he was ruling out all of the other traits as the culprit. Which meant that, for some reason, Thomas had created these traps for the sole purpose of bottling up and possibly killing him and Patton. So now there was only one question: Had they been created subconsciously, or did Thomas actually intend to get rid of the emotional traits? Maybe he really did want to grow up and be a “real adult,” and had lied to all of them in that one video to throw them off while he created a way to get rid of his childish emotions once and for all.

Anxiety saw the glass starting to frost up again, and shooed that thought away. The first step was to stay calm and not negative until he could figure out a way out of the bottle. Roman’s sword had not stayed in the bottle, not that it would have done any good. Well, it might have, and this might be a completely different bottle, but Anxiety preferred to think that this was the same bottle he had been in with Roman. It was better than the thought of many bottle traps just lurking somewhere in the mindscape, waiting for him or Patton to overreact to something.

He looked back over to the other bottle. Nothing new had been written on the side, and Logan and Patton seemed to be arguing about something now. He thought he read the word “love” from Logan’s lips, and wondered if he had finally realized how much flirting Patton had been doing. Anxiety sighed. It was lonely, being in a bottle by himself and being ignored by the PTA squad. He thought of summoning Roman, just to have someone there, but decided against it. If all four of them were in the bottles, who was going to get them out? Even worse, what would happen to Thomas?

Anxiety suddenly realized that only one of them was outside of the bottle. Only  _one_  of them currently had any influence on what Thomas was thinking and feeling.

Roman was the only one influencing Thomas.

He was in Total Daydream Mode.

Oh God.

~

Total Daydream Mode was quickly becoming a total nightmare. Roman had been almost finished watching the memory of the last video when a siren screamed throughout the mindscape, alerting everyone that “DAYDREAM MODE IS NOW ACTIVATED! DAYDREAM MODE IS NOW ACTIVATED!” He had been confused at first. After all, he hadn’t activated Daydream Mode, and none of the others could activate Daydream Mode. Then he realized that meant only one thing. Somehow, all of the other traits had disappeared.

This meant that he was in charge of Thomas. At first, he tried to keep things running normally, trying to keep the conversation between Thomas and his acquaintance flowing while he summoned help. He brought Patton’s children, one of the substitute teachers from Logan’s school, a Nightmare or two from Anxiety’s realm.

Naturally, everything went to hell in a handbasket. There was no possibility of the figments taking the places of Patton, Logan, and Anxiety, and since Roman was the only trait there, he was the only trait influencing the figments. All of a sudden he had a nightmare of a substitute teacher terrorizing the children, who were trying to fight back Percy Jackson style. There was no dealing with this.

He banished the figments, and made Thomas excuse himself, saying “I suddenly feel really, really sick.” Driving home was an absolute terror without Logan and Patton’s influences. As soon as Thomas was inside and the door was locked, Roman snapped Daydream Mode straight into Dream Mode. Hopefully Thomas would forgive him later for using direct influence and making him pass out on the floor, but if not, that was another matter for another day.

“Anxiety!” he called through the mindscape. No response, not even a general location. “Patton! Logan!”

If they weren’t responding, they were going to be in trouble. Roman snapped, teleporting to his castle, and ran for the armory. He tried taking the usual route, only to find a wall instead of a turn. He turned around to go back the way he came, only to find another wall. The castle was shapeshifting before his very eyes, an unfortunate side effect of Dream Mode. He groaned in frustration. He didn’t have time for this.

He closed his eyes, visualized the doors to the armory, and started sprinting forward. A few seconds later, he crashed into something solid at full speed. He opened his eyes. The armory, good. He threw the doors open and dashed around, looking for his sword. He searched every nook and cranny, but the sword was nowhere to be found. He grabbed a flanged mace, some rope, and a shield, confused as to why his sword wasn’t in its proper place.

Then he remembered that he’d gotten it stuck in the bottle he and Anxiety had been trapped in. Wait a minute. The bottles! They couldn’t teleport out of the bottles, and presumably only Thomas could summon them out, since it was only Thomas’s summons that he’d heard while inside. And if Thomas was the only one who could summon them, then it was unlikely he could ping their general location if they were trapped inside the bottles. The other sides must have somehow  _all_ gotten trapped.

Roman grinned, an idea starting to form. He could summon the sword from anywhere, but he could also summon himself to the sword. Then, he would be in the location of the bottles, and hopefully, the other sides. He pictured the sword, more specifically the point of the blade, since he knew the point would be outside of the bottle. He willed himself to the blade.

And suddenly, he was there. He was in some sort of grayish place, with a dull concrete floor that stretched out into darkness. There was no ceiling above, at least not that he could see, only more darkness. His sword was a few feet away on the ground, surrounded by shattered glass. Roman carefully maneuvered over to it and picked it up. Since he was already holding a mace, he sheathed the sword.

Unsure of which way to go, since the others were obviously not here, he called out again. “Anxiety! Morality! Logic!”

_Creeeak_.

He looked to his right, where the sound had come from. “Logic?” he called out.

_Thump_.

Whatever that was sounded too heavy to be Logan’s footsteps, but if he was trapped in a bottle, then he could have knocked it over somehow in order to roll it. “Logic! I’m over here!” Roman called, picking his way through the glass towards the sound.

_Creeeak. Thump_. It was getting closer. As Roman walked, he saw other things get brighter and clearer, while it got darker around the glass behind him. Was he glowing? Perhaps this strange land was set up like a video game, where you could only see a few feet around the main character.

_Creeeak. Thump_. Roman saw something move, something too big to be Logan or a glass bottle.

_Creeeak. Thump_. It was some sort of large cube, tilting up on its side and then falling over in order to get closer to him. Seeing it made him uneasy. Was this what Logan was trapped in?

_Creeeak. Thump._  Now it was in the light. It was some sort of clear block, and it was empty on the inside. As it tilted, the glass on the side about to become the bottom shriveled away like magic, and the glass that had been on the bottom appeared in just the opposite way. Roman moved to the side. It swiveled toward him.

_Creeeak. Thump_. It was targeting him. It was some sort of trap. And it was not something he could fight.

He turned and fled. The trap sped up behind him. He saw the shattered glass and leapt over it. He looked back as the trap went over the glass. It picked up a lot of glass when it tilted to the next side, and the glass was now bouncing around inside of it. If Roman got caught inside the trap now, he would surely be cut to ribbons. He ran faster, passing bottles, steel traps, and what looked like very large dandelions. He was so intent on running that he didn’t even notice when the light ran out in front of him. He slammed right into a wall of darkness, almost bludgeoning himself with the mace. Instead, he put a worrying dent in his own shield. Gasping, he turned left and started running, now weaving behind bottles and jumping over steel traps and hoping he didn’t find any other of the blocks that would trap him. The wall curved, making him constantly turn left. The trap behind him kept having to stop and adjust. It also kept absorbing other traps, slowing it down. He was losing it.

Eventually, he could no longer hear the trap coming behind him. He leaned against the wall and put his shield hand over his mouth. He was desperately out of breath, but he had to be quiet. Noise was what had drawn the trap in the first place. He slowed his breath while doing his best to get oxygen back into his body. He listened carefully, but there was no sound of the trap coming.

Making sure there was nothing hazardous beneath him, Roman sat down, leaning against the wall. Already, he was exhausted. He had used up a lot of energy trying to keep Thomas alive in Daydream Mode, and then even more forcibly putting him into Dream Mode. Then of course, all the running he had done both in the palace and in this hell space didn’t help either. He couldn’t rest though. He’d let Anxiety and the others down enough already. This time, if he failed them, they might be trapped forever. And if he got caught in a trap, and all of them were trapped, what would happen to Thomas? Would the figments form into new versions of them in the absence of all of them? Would he die? Or would he become merely a shell, lacking all of his core traits? Roman wasn’t sure that Thomas  _could_  live without the other three. Without Logic, how would he learn, or repeat something that he’d already learned, or figure new things out? He could hurt himself or die so easily without Logan’s influence. Without Morality, how would he keep his friends, or stay on the right side of the law? If Patton wasn’t there, nothing could stop him from acting immoral, and who knows how far that might go? Treason? Arson? Murder? Even Anxiety was important to helping Thomas. Anxiety kept Thomas from being reckless, and he reminded Thomas of due dates and keeping in touch with friends. Without Anxiety, who knows what kind of trouble Thomas would get get into? They could feasibly get along without Roman, but the other three were essential, and he  _had_  to save them.

Ignoring his tiredness, he got back up. It seemed that everything in here was a trap, so he wouldn’t be able to defend himself. He set the shield down against the wall behind him. No sense in carrying the extra weight. He kept the mace, though, because the sword had already been shown to not help with bottles. Hopefully the mace would be able to shatter the bottle walls. He also kept the rope, because rope was almost always useful in adventures.

Very quietly, he started to walk through the gray. He tiptoed away from the wall and through the bottles, peering through each one to make sure his comrades were not inside. He did this for what seemed like hours, with nothing to show for it. He passed the trap that had pursued him at least twice. It was full to bursting with shattered glass, steel, and dandelion fuzz. There were other block traps that he passed, too. He held his breath and his sword as he passed them, trying to be as silent as the grave.

At what Roman assumed to be the center of this grey place was a spiral staircase. When he finally exhausted his other options, having searched each and every bottle, he decided to ascend. Normally, he wasn’t afraid of stairs. Why would he be? However, this staircase had no safety railing, and the stairs looked worryingly thin and flimsy, connected to nothing but the pole in the middle. Plus, everything else in the grayspace had been a trap. Who knew what harm the staircase would bring.

Still, he had to save the others. He stepped onto the first step. It gave a loud  _squeeeeak!_  From somewhere in the distance, he heard an answering  _creeeak!_  No turning back now. Roman started hurrying up the steps as fast as he dared. The floor faded into darkness. He could still see nothing above him but darkness. The only things that seemed to exist were him and the stairs.

Suddenly, his foot was met with nothing. He fell, upper body slamming onto higher stairs and lower body dangling above the darkness. Panicked, he gripped tightly to a higher stair with his free hand, then let go of the mace to grip with his other hand. The mace, tilted on the edge between two steps, rolled a bit and fell into the darkness. Roman swore. Then, before his exhaustion could take over, he pulled himself up onto the stable steps. All he could do was lay there, gasping, fear making it impossible to even let go of the steps. He looked down at where he’d fallen through. It looked like there was a stair there, but his left foot went right through the illusion when he kicked at it. He wondered if he should summon the mace to him, but already knew he didn’t have the energy. He wasn’t sure he had the energy to continue however far it was up the steps, if the steps even had an end to them.

Realizing how close he was to passing out, Roman decided that the only thing he could do was rest. He didn’t want to chance falling asleep and rolling off the edge of the stairs like his mace had, though, so he took his rope, tied it to the pole in the middle about four stairs up, and then tied the rope around his waist. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, with the excess rope he also tied knots above the third and second stair up, the loops resting securely on the peg that held the stair in place. He tied another knot around his waist, and then looped the rest of the rope around him. Curled around the middle pole and securely strapped in, he let himself doze.

**~**

“How long have we been in here?” Patton asked, bored, uncomfortable, and fidgety.

“I don’t know,” Logan said. “My watch has stopped working. Do you remember anything else?”

“I don’t think so,” Patton said.

After trying and failing to open the bottle, and trying and failing to convince Patton of the very obvious signs that Anxiety and Roman were secretly dating, Logan had decided to write down everything they’d learned so far about the bottles and interrogate Patton to try and jog his memory. He had originally wanted to get Anxiety’s input on this as well, but Anxiety seemed to be ignoring them in favor of doodling on his arm with the sharpie. Because of that, all Logan had were his own observations and Patton’s faulty memory.

_–SOMETIMES CREATES FROST ON GLASS. UNCLEAR WHY. MORE FROST ON ANX’S BOTTLE THAN OURS._

_–FROST ORIGINALLY CREATED AFTER PAT. TAPPED ON THE GLASS, BUT SUBSEQUENT TESTS UNABLE TO RECREATE._

_–ACC. TO PAT ANX ALWAYS HAS FROST ON BOTTLE._

_–FROST IS NOT COLD-BASED AND DOES NOT DISAPPEAR._

_–BOTTLE IS APPARENTLY ONLY FOR EMOTION-BASED TRAITS. WHY I AM HERE–UNCLEAR._

_–ANX ASSUMES THAT I INVENTED THE BOTTLES. WHY–UNCLEAR_

_–ACC. TO PAT ANX IS USUALLY IN SIDEWAYS BOTTLE, PAT IS IN UPRIGHT. WHY THEY ARE SWITCHED–UNCLEAR._

So far, this was all they had, and most of it raised more questions than answers. Why did the frost happen in the first place, and why were they unable to recreate it? Why was he here if it was for emotion-based traits only? Was it because he had touched Patton? That was something he didn’t understand, as he and Patton had made physical contact before, and nothing had happened before. Of course, this was before the shape-changing video where Patton had hugged Thomas. Had something gone wrong because of the two interacting? Would that make it so that Patton could never touch anyone again without this happening?

Then there were the last two points. Anxiety had accused Logan of inventing the bottles, and Patton said he hadn’t believed Logan when he said he didn’t. Was that why Anxiety had been so worried when Logan had come over? Why was Anxiety so afraid? And if that was the reason, why is he so calm now that he’s inside the bottle? Is it because he’s in Patton’s bottle? Logan didn’t see why that would make any difference. He also didn’t see why they were switched now, especially if they never had been before. Perhaps it was because he was here, too. Maybe, somehow Logan was the cause of the switch. He didn’t see how that worked either, but without further data, his own presence was the only new variable he could determine.

He looked away from his notes as he felt Patton flop across his thighs. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m uncomfortable, and you’re soft.”

Logan raised an eyebrow. “I am not  _soft_ ,” he said.

“You’re softer than anything else in here,” Patton replied, wriggling around to make himself more comfortable. “Including, I think, me. I think I’m bonier than you are.”

“That is improbable, considering that we are the same person.”

“But are we really? We’re shapeshifters, and while we all typically look like Thomas, how do you know that we  _really_  look like Thomas? How do you know that there aren’t some details that we missed? And since we are different, and we all stand on different sides of Thomas and we all see him differently, how do you know that we aren’t all slightly different?”

“That…is actually a good point,” Logan said. “I hadn’t thought of it that way before.”

There was silence for a moment as Logan pondered whether they really  _did_  look like Thomas. Then, realizing that he was getting off track, he wrote that idea on a different sheet of his notebook and turned back to the task at hand.

“Tell me a story, Lo,” Patton said, now kicking his feet in the air and doodling on the floor with the whiteboard marker.

“That is unconducive to figuring out how to get out of here.”

“I don’t  _know_  how to get out of here. I’m positive that I didn’t even know before I forgot everything.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t reason a way to get out of here.”

Patton rolled onto his side so that he could face Logan. “You’re going to _reason_  your way out of an  _emotion_  bottle?”

“Yes!” Logan snapped. “There’s a logical explanation for everything, including this! If I can figure out  _how_  this works, then we can figure out  _how_  to get out of here!”

“Don’t snap at me, Logan!” Patton snapped back. “Just because your logic’s been  _faulty_  lately, doesn’t mean you have to get angry at me!”

“My logic hasn’t been  _faulty_ , you’re refusing to listen to facts!”

“You’re so absorbed with your ‘facts’ that you can’t even tell when people are lying!”

Logan was about to strike back with a correction on that when he noticed something that snapped him out of the argument. “The frost is spreading again,” he said.

“What?” Patton asked, confused by the sudden change in conversation. Then he looked around too, and sat up. Where he had been laying was now rippled and thicker than the rest of the bottle, and the area around it was frosted. There was frost about halfway up the bottle.

Logan moved too, and where he had been sitting was only frosted, not rippled, even at the spot where Patton had been laying on top of him. He rubbed at the distinct line between the ripples and the frost, noting the different textures. Then, he started making notes.

“What are you thinking?” Patton asked quietly, already ashamed of how he’d reacted.

“I’m thinking that you’re somehow causing the glass to warp, and I’m thinking it has something to do with your emotions.”

~

Anxiety had watched anxiously when the bottle containing Logan and Patton started frosting up. Worried that they wouldn’t know what to do and that Patton would freak out until the bottle crushed them and they died, Anxiety had started writing on his bottle, desperately hoping that they would look over.  _Negative emotions make glass thicker, bottle smaller. Think positive!_  he wrote, carefully avoiding touching the glass with his hands. They paid no mind to him. Knowing it was futile, but desperately wanting them to stay safe, Anxiety started pounding on the glass. “Patton! Logan!”

The glass started blistering, then spreading. It quickly covered the writing. “No!” Anxiety said, quickly stepping back away from the wall. He hoped they could still see it from the other side. Frost was starting to creep up from the bottom again, and Anxiety took a deep breath. He had to stay calm. He sat back on the floor, twirling the sharpie between his fingers. Between the frost and the rippling, there was only a thin strip of clear bottle on the side that the other bottle was on. He could barely see the others, much less communicate with them now. He resigned himself to being alone and trapped until someone else figured out how to break the bottles. He hoped Logan and Patton figured something out soon.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roman gets to be a hero and everyone tries to communicate more. Warnings: short descriptions of injuries, various traps, insecurities, some second-hand embarrassment possibly

When Roman woke up, every inch of him was sore, but the nap had taken the edge off his exhaustion. He unwrapped and untied the rope from around himself, and as he did, he could practically  _feel_  that it had left angry red marks around his waist. Better those, which were harmless, than falling off the edge though. He coiled up the rope and put it over his shoulder, then stood up.

He almost fell immediately, not from another invisible step, but from pain. He very quickly sat down and looked at his right leg, which felt like it was on fire. His pant leg was ripped, and part of it stuck to his leg, bloodstained in a wobbly line all the way down his calf. He must have scraped his leg falling through the steps and not noticed until now. Not having any water to loosen the grip between his wound and his pants so he could see how bad it was without damaging his leg further, nor any healing potions, Roman did the next best thing: he took his sash off and wrapped it around his leg, hopefully making it so that his wound wouldn’t reopen while walking and adding an extra layer of protection if it did. He lamented the fact that shapeshifting wouldn’t magic away his wounds, and started crawling up the stairs, both to ease the pain in his leg and to make sure that he didn’t fall through any more illusion steps.

After a while, he started to see gray instead of black above him. Finally, an end to the stairs! Elated, Roman started climbing slightly faster. Once he reached the top, he resisted the urge to yell in victory. He had no idea what was on this floor. He stood up, unwilling to show weakness in the face of possible enemies. He stepped off the staircase and looked around. Here he spotted more dandelion fuzz, more steel traps, and more bottles. There was one very large block trap right near the staircase, and Roman was glad he hadn’t made a sound. In the opposite direction from the block trap, there was something softly glowing in the distance. It could either be some undiscovered, new, dangerous trap, or it could be the others, glowing like Roman was. He decided to chance it and start walking that way.

It was slow going, limping as badly as he was. He wished he still had his mace, as it was the perfect length for a cane, but he’d tried summoning it twice, and neither time had it come. He wondered if this floor had some special magic protecting it, or if he was just out of energy to do anything more than walk. Roman didn’t feel very tired anymore. Mostly he just felt pain.

He was so distracted while walking that he almost didn’t notice the steel trap he almost stepped in. He tried to change course, but threw himself off balance and fell into a bottle, which tipped over and crashed into both another bottle and a dandelion. The other bottle didn’t tip over, but the dandelion exploded, fuzz flying out and up on some breeze that Roman didn’t feel. He held his breath as a familiar  _creeeak!_  sounded throughout the grayscape. He stayed silent. There was no accompanying  _thump!_

After waiting painful, silent minutes to make sure that the block trap was not on the move, Roman stood up and started heading toward the light again. There was still so far to go.

~

Anxiety would deny it later, but when he saw Roman limping up from the opposite side of his bottle from Logan and Patton, all of the frost on the bottle disappeared. Roman had come to save them! When Roman made eye contact and gave a weak, exhausted smile, Anxiety grinned back. That made Roman smile wider, and say something that Anxiety couldn’t hear. His smile dropped, and he asked “What?” Roman shook his head, still smiling. Whatever. Anxiety didn’t want to know what he said anyway.

Roman surveyed the bottle. Anxiety had managed to stay very calm this time, considering how clear it was. There were only two rippled spots, on the side near the tipped-over bottle that Logan and Patton were in. Theirs was considerably worse off, which was kind of surprising, since neither of them were very prone to negative outbursts, but also kind of not surprising, since they wouldn’t know how it worked and Patton had probably gotten scared.

There was no question that Roman would have to start with Anxiety. The glass was thinner because he’d stayed calmer. While there was an easy-to-reach cork on Logan and Patton’s bottle, Roman was almost certain that glass had grown across it from all the ripples and frost. Also, if there was a reachable cork, and Logan and Patton hadn’t already gotten out, it was unlikely that Roman would be able to remove it by himself.

Roman drew his sword, and gently placed the blade along the edge of the bottle. Already he could feel the bottle trying to draw it in and capture it, in the same way that the other bottle had taken it and it had gotten stuck. The only way to free them, then, might be to either shatter the bottle or use the cork.

Roman looked up to see Anxiety looking at him questioningly. Below his eyes, he’d written  _What are you thinking?_

Roman pulled out his notebook and pen, and flipped to an empty page. He wrote, then chewed on the end of the pen for a moment while he tried to figure out the rest, then wrote some more, and then put the notebook up so Anxiety could read it.

_If I use the sword, I have a feeling that it will get stuck again, like last time. I believe that the only way to get you free is to pop the cork or shatter the bottle. I can’t reach the cork on your bottle. I think I can shatter it, but the plan I have is potentially dangerous. I have a rope with me that I can throw around the top of the bottle, then pull to topple and shatter it. I believe if you crouch down on the floor against the wall nearest me, then you will be in the least possible danger, but it’s still dangerous and you might get hurt from the broken glass. As this plan would affect you the most, and might seriously injure you, I want your consent before I try it. You’re under no obligation, of course, and if you think it too dangerous I will do my absolute best to figure out a way to pop the cork and get you out._

Anxiety read what he wrote, then looked at him, wide-eyed. Then he looked up at the cork on top of his bottle, then back at Roman, then at Roman’s injured leg, then back at Roman’s face. He popped the sharpie cap off and started writing.

_Do it._

Roman raised his eyebrows at Anxiety, as though saying  _Are you sure?_  Anxiety nodded and slid down against the wall like Roman had written. He braced his arms around his head to protect it in the fall. Roman stepped back and slid the rope off of his shoulder. He tied a small loop in one end and threaded the rope through it in order to make a larger, adjustable loop. He threw the larger end over the top of the bottle and pulled it tight around the neck of the bottle. Roman backed up to get maximum leverage. He saw Anxiety still watching him. “On three,” Roman said, indicating with his fingers while he talked. “One, two, three!”

Anxiety braced himself inside the bottle. Roman yanked with all his strength. Miraculously, it worked. With a huge  _crash!_  the bottle shattered. In the distance, Roman heard a  _thump!_

“I can’t believe that  _worked!_ ” Anxiety exclaimed, shifting the glass off of him and carefully picking his way through to Roman. He had shallow cuts on his forearms and shins, but for the most part, he was okay. He was being loud, but Roman didn’t hear any answering noise from the block trap. “Hey, what’s wrong?” Anxiety asked, noticing Roman scan the blackness.

“I heard a noise,” Roman whispered back. “There’s a trap in here that comes toward me whenever I make too much noise, but it doesn’t seem to be affected by you.”

“There’s a trap in this place that targets  _you_  too?” Anxiety asked, now whispering as well. “What _is_  this place? Does it have traps for Logan too?”

“I’d guess that either the steel bear traps or the dandelion things are meant for Logan, since the bottles are for you  _and_ Patton.”

“Is this whole place meant just for capturing and or killing us?” Anxiety asked disbelievingly.

“Seems to be. Let’s hurry up and free the other two.”

Roman walked over to the other bottle. It seemed that for the most part, the frost here had disappeared too. Patton must have been overjoyed when they smashed Anxiety’s bottle.

“How are we going to get this one open? It’s already on it’s side, we can’t tip it over,” Anxiety said.

“We have to get the cork off.”

“Logan and Patton already tried. Even together they weren’t strong enough. I don’t think the two of us can do it either.”

“Well, we could pick up the bottle and shake it, see if it works like champagne.” That comment earned a ‘hah!’ from Anxiety. “See, I told you I could make you smile.”

Anxiety scowled at him. “You’re still not funny.”

“And yet, you laughed. In seriousness, though, I believe that we shall have to enlist the help of Logan and Patton as well. Two might not be strong enough to pop the cork, but three or four might be.”

“Alright, I’ll tell them.” Anxiety still had doubt in his voice, but Roman supposed that was only natural. Anxiety pulled out his sharpie and began writing the plan for Logan and Patton. Once he was done, they gave him the thumbs up and crawled over to the corked end of the bottle. Logan positioned himself to use his legs to push, Patton, his arms. Roman and Anxiety grabbed the outer edges of the cork.

Roman held out a hand to count. “One, two, three!”

Everyone pushed or pulled with everything they had. After a few seconds of nothing, the cork suddenly exploded outward. Anxiety and Roman fell over. The cork went flying into darkness, creating a large crash that extended for several seconds. Somehow, the block trap was nowhere to be heard.

Then, as if it decided that hadn’t been dramatic enough, the bottle shattered. Amazingly, the only injuries sustained from that were on Logan’s palms and Patton’s elbows. “We’re free!” Patton said, delighted. “Where are we?”

“I’m not sure,” Roman said quietly. “But everything in here is designed to trap and possibly kill us.”

“ _Kill?_ ” Patton squeaked.

“Oh, of course, you don’t know how the bottles work, do you?”

“No, I do,” Patton said. “But the bottles won’t  _kill_  you.”

Everyone stared at him, eyebrows raised. “Got your memory back, did you?” Logan asked.

“Yeah. I think the sideways bottle has to make your brain fuzzy or something, because I never have this problem but Anxiety always does.”

“You  _knew?!_ ” Anxiety screeched. “You knew this entire time and you didn’t _tell_ me?”

“I did the first few times, but you kept forgetting, so I thought I’d wait until you remembered them and then we could figure it out together.”

“Back to the part about the bottles not killing you, please,” Roman said. “Because the last time we were inside a bottle, Anxiety and I were nearly crushed to death!”

“Is that what happens after the bottles ripple up?” Patton said. “I never could figure it out. Usually what happens is that Anxiety doesn’t know what’s going on, and then he starts freaking out and the bottle ripples and turns opaque, and I can’t see anything and I wait for hours until suddenly there’s a shattering sound and we’re both in Thomas’s living room. Usually Thomas has a panic attack too.”

The pieces were falling into place for everyone. Logan was furiously scribbling in his notebook, determined to never let either of them forget this.

“So you’re saying…” Anxiety said. “…the only way to get out of the bottles ourselves…is to panic until we die, basically.”

“I don’t know,” Patton said. “Maybe. Maybe you discover something after your panic attack every time that allows you to leave the bottle. Maybe you take a nap and wake up in the living room, since you always say ‘I was sleeping’ after you enter.”

“It’s not a nap,” Roman said. “He did try that while I was there.”

Patton shrugged, at a loss. Anxiety sighed, and said, “Whatever, we can figure this out later. We still need to get out of Trapland or wherever this is.”

“Okay,” Patton said. He snapped. Nothing happened. He frowned, and snapped again, with the same result. He closed his eyes and  _willed_ himself to rise into Thomas’s living room, but when he opened his eyes, he was still in the grayspace. “Well that’s…not good.”

“Maybe we have to go downstairs,” Roman whispered. “I couldn’t summon the mace from downstairs, up, but I did summon myself to my sword when it was downstairs.”

“There’s a  _downstairs?_ ” Anxiety asked. “Is it full of traps too?” At Roman’s nod, Anxiety gripped at his hair and groaned. “Oh God, Thomas really does mean to kill us.”

“That’s absurd, Anxiety,” Logan said. “Now is not the time to be jumping to conclusions.”

“Really? Traps specifically for each of us, which none of us knew about beforehand? And a huge  _warehouse_  full of them–”

“It’s actually more of a tower,” Roman mumbled. Anxiety glared at him, “Sorry, you were making a point there?”

“–a huge  _tower_  full of traps that may or may not kill us but will definitely cause a lot of pain in the meantime? Come on Logan, it’s not really much of a jump!”

“But it is still a jump, nonetheless. If we really want to know what’s going on with these traps, we will have to confront Thomas about it. And I don’t think there’s traps for all of us. I certainly haven’t seen–”

Whatever Logan was going to say was cut short as Roman pushed him aside, drawing his sword. He sliced at a dandelion puff that had been headed directly for Logan, cutting it in half. The fluff bit started floating away. The seed dropped right onto Roman’s chest, and then exploded into a vine, quickly wrapping around him. He suddenly doubted if he’d made the right choice. After all, if it had been Logan caught in the vine, he’d be able to cut him free. In fact, he’d been making wrong decisions all day. He knew that he and Anxiety had successfully gotten out of the bottle before, just by Thomas’s summons. Why hadn’t he kept Thomas awake and asked him to do exactly that? Odin’s eyepatch, he was so stupid. Logan knew it. Anxiety definitely knew it. Patton probably knew it too and was just too nice to say anything. He didn’t deserve to be a side at all. He was a worthless Creativity: none of his ideas were original, anything he thought of was too absurd and grandiose, even the Dragon Witch would be better–

“Hey!” Roman blinked as Anxiety shouted at him. He was…free? And on the ground? Anxiety was wrapping something black and moving around his wrist. Oh, was he talking?

“What?” he asked.

“Are you okay? Because you don’t look okay to me.”

“Um. Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” Roman said. “What was that thing?”

“It was a Doubt,” Anxiety said. “Or, well, a Seed of Doubt. I put some of my power into it and turned it into an Insecurity, which I can control, and got it off of you. I’m thinking that these are Logan’s trap things, since–hey, are you crying?”

“Anxiety, you saved me!” Roman said. Yes, he was crying, but they were tears of gratitude and he was exhausted and there was a relieved smile on his face.

“I’m sorry?” Anxiety said, alarmed. “I won’t do it again!”

“Anxiety, you’re my hero! I give you my eternal gratitude! I owe you my life!”

“Stop being dramatic!” Anxiety snapped. Sure, he’d wanted to not be a villain (and _maybe_  he’d thought, once or twice, about how nice it would be to be seen as the hero for once), but Roman was scaring him. He was crying because Anxiety saved him. Normal people don’t  _cry_  because they got saved.

“Alright kiddos, let’s just calm down, okay?” Patton said. “I know we’re all scared but we need to keep our wits about us so we can get out of here, alright?”

“I’m not…Patton, we’re all the same age,” Anxiety said.

“I propose that we move to a lighter topic of conversation!” Logan said. “For example: how long have Anxiety and Roman been secretly dating?”

“ _What?!_ ” Roman squeaked. In the distance he heard a  _thump!_  and he quickly slapped a hand over his mouth.

“ _Now_  who’s jumping to conclusions?” Anxiety said.

“I  _told_  you, Logan!” Patton said triumphantly. “I  _told_ you they were not dating!”

“Well, it’s an easy mistake to make,” Logan said, defensively. “All of the evidence showed otherwise.”

“Evidence? What evidence? What could possibly lead you to that conclusion?” Anxiety asked.

Logan flipped to a previous page in his notebook. It was full of writing.

“You have a whole page?” Anxiety asked.

“I have several pages,” Logan said.

“Oh, so you’re not just wrong, but you’re thoroughly wrong,” Anxiety said, running a hand through his hair agitatedly. “Good to know.”

“Can we talk about this after we get back?” Roman asked. “I’m as excited as anyone else to see Logan being wrong, but I’m tired and injured and we have Thomas to think about, who is currently lacking all four of us.”

“Of course, buddy,” Patton said. “Do you need help up?”

“Of course not!” Roman stage whispered defensively. He quickly pushed himself up, and fell as his leg buckled under him.

Anxiety caught him. “You sure about that?” Anxiety asked.

“I’m fine, Panic-at-the-Mindscape,” Roman said, regaining his balance and braced for the pain. “I just lost my balance. Where’s my sword?”

“It’s right here, kiddo,” Patton said, handing it over.

“Thanks,” Roman said, sheathing it. He looked around to regain his bearings, and then started walking. “This way. I think.”

Everyone fell in behind him, with Patton directly behind him, then Logan, then Anxiety at the back. He quietly wove through the assorted traps, doing his best to not limp. He was  _fine._

A panicked “Logan!” from Anxiety and Roman spun to face the new threat. He saw Anxiety grab a Doubt Seed from above Logan. Logan stumbled away, and only by Patton’s quick reflexes did he miss one of the steel bear traps, which snapped at him anyway.

Anxiety was staring at the seed in his hands. It remained a dandelion fluff, rather than sprouting and curling around him like it had with Roman. Curious, Anxiety snapped it in half, separating the seed from the fluff. The trap still didn’t activate. “Patton, catch!” he said, tossing the seed at him. Patton fumbled but caught the seed. Still, nothing happened. Patton threw it back to Anxiety. “…Logan, catch.”

That  _did_  cause a reaction, which Anxiety fixed with a quick crackle of black magic. Soon, another Insecurity was on his arm, though this one was crawling up and down his arm like some sort of lizard rather than being tied around a wrist.

Logan was staring, horrified, at the Insecurity. “You okay?” Anxiety asked.

“No!” Logan said. “That was awful! And you keep those things as pets?”

“I mean, they’re more of an infestation than anything else, but they don’t really bother me. It’s not like they tell me anything I don’t say myself.” At Logan’s concerned look, Anxiety raised his hands in a  _what?_  expression. “I’m Anxiety! Fears and Insecurities are my  _job_.”

“And you’re doing a great job of it, kiddo,” Patton said. “Can we keep moving? This place is getting creepier by the second.”

“Sure,” Anxiety said. “Keep an eye out for any more of these things, though, since you aren’t affected by them either. Logan, keep an eye on the floor too, so you don’t step on any of the bear traps.”

They started walking again. This time it was quiet going, except for a few more seeds, which were quickly caught and discarded. Anxiety snapped a bear trap with one. Patton would just snap them in half with his hands and toss them to the side, ensuring that they wouldn’t fly up again. They reached the stairs without incident.

“All right, be  _very_  careful on these stairs,” Roman said. “There’s no handrailing, and one of the steps is an illusion, so be very careful not to fall off or through them.”

The way down was far easier now that Roman knew what to expect. The only major problems on the staircase were when Anxiety’s little demons decided to drop down onto the stairs and he tripped over them, and that Roman’s leg was bleeding again by the time they got to the bottom. Since there were no traps on the stairs, he even felt free to talk normally with the rest of them, laughing and joking as though it were a normal adventure. His high spirits made up for his low energy.

Once they reached the bottom, Patton gleefully leaped off the stairs and snapped his fingers. Nothing happened at all. The other three tried as well, with similar results. Roman swore quietly and sat down on the steps. Logan sighed in frustration and ran a hand through his hair. Patton sat cross-legged on the floor. Anxiety started walking around the first floor, his glow departing somewhat from the others’ but not so much that they couldn’t see him.

“Well, since it looks like we’re stuck here, does anyone want to play a game?” Patton asked, still trying to be cheerful.

Logan shrugged. Anxiety didn’t respond. Roman said, “Sure, why not? There’s nothing to do in this tower except run from traps anyway.”

“Okay, how about a word association game? Let’s start with, uh, prince!”

“Charming,” Roman and Anxiety said at the same time, then glared at each other.

“Roman,” Logan said.

“Okay, dragon!”

“Witch!”

“Komodo.”

“Knight.”

“Tower!”

“Column.”

“Princess.”

“Dragon.”

Patton paused in thought. “Huh, towers  _are_  technically columns, aren’t they?”

“That is correct, yes,” Logan said.

“So maybe…” Patton started. “Maybe this place is more of a column than a tower.”

“The terms aren’t mutually exclusive,” Logan said, annoyed that Patton stopped the game so suddenly.

“Maybe even…a column…in the middle of all of us?”

“That’s preposterous, Patton,” Roman said. “The tower isn’t in the middle of us. We are in the middle of it.”

“No, wait, he’s making a reference to something I said a few videos ago,” Logan said.

“You’re always so smart, Logan,” Patton said, suddenly in the form of Terrence.

“Why are you shapeshifting?” Logan asked.

Suddenly there was a shattering noise to their left that drew their attention. Anxiety had found the mace that Roman had dropped earlier, and had shattered a bottle with it. “Wow, too bad you didn’t have this, Roman,” Anxiety said.

“You know you’re holding that mace incorrectly,” Logan said. “It is not meant to be used like a baseball bat.”

“Patton’s gone!” Roman said.

“What?!” Logan and Anxiety said, looking to where the father figure had been. There was only empty space.

“Hmm,” Logan said, changing into Joan. He snapped his fingers, and disappeared.

Roman blinked. “Oh,” he said. “It’s that simple.”

“Of course it’s shapeshifting,” Anxiety said. “It had to be shapeshifting.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Roman said, suddenly remembering how much Anxiety hated it. “We know Thomas can summon you from the grayspace. With the three of us back, he’d be acting normally and summoning you would be easy.”

Anxiety looked like he was seriously considering it, then shook his head and transformed into Joan. “Best if he doesn’t know about this.”

“Anxiety, we’re going to have to tell him eventually,” Roman said.

“No, no we don’t,” Anxiety said, snapping his fingers and disappearing.

Roman sighed, and changed into Valerie. No matter what Anxiety wanted, they  _would_  have to confront Thomas eventually. The grayspace was too dangerous.

He envisioned the palace and snapped home.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re finally free, but there’s still questions needing answering and discussions to be had.  
> Warnings: mild descriptions of injury care, mild verbal arguments, some yelling

Roman had just gotten his hands on a small bottle of healing potion when Patton summoned him to his house.

“Seriously?!” he asked, stumbling into the living room–and into Anxiety.

“Wow, now that I see you in the light, you look like a trainwreck,” Anxiety said.

Roman scowled. “At least I don’t look like a Hot Topic threw up on me.” He pushed himself away from Anxiety and started walking toward the bathroom to take care of his injuries.

“You need to borrow a pair of pants?” Patton asked. “Yours are kinda ruined.”

“Thanks, Patton,” Roman said.

Patton ran off to his room to get a pair of pants while Roman headed for the bathroom. He shut the door behind him and started running the faucet in the bathtub, waiting for it to warm up. Patton knocked and then opened the door just enough to set the pants on the floor, then shut the door and walked away. Roman started undressing the wound, using the warm water to get the sticky blood to let go of the fabric. He got the sash off of his leg first, sighing as he saw its condition. He’d  _never_  get the stains out of it. He tossed it aside. The pant leg took more work, and Roman had to be more gentle with it. Finally, he got it all disconnected from his leg, and went to work with the healing potion. Once that was done, he looked himself over for any other injuries. He found several small cuts on his arms that he hadn’t noticed before, and nearly cried over the bloodstains on his white tunic. He knew it didn’t matter, he knew he had others just like it at home in the palace, but it had been a long awful day (days? He still wasn’t sure) and this was the cherry on top. Frustrated, he took off the tunic, so he was standing only in an undershirt and his soaked, ripped pants. Not only were there cuts, there were also dark, banded bruises all over his arms–and when he pulled up his undershirt, his torso, too. For a moment, he was confused, because he didn’t think he tied the ropes that tight when he was on the staircase. Then he remembered the Seed of Doubt, and everything made sense. He regretted using all of the healing potion on his leg.

With a sigh, he searched Patton’s bathroom for bandaids. The only ones he found were brightly colored Steven Universe ones, obviously meant for the kids’ enjoyment. He stuck them on to cover the cuts anyway. He thought about putting his tunic back on, but decided against it, not wanting to chance getting blood on any of Patton’s furniture. Besides, it wasn’t like Patton hadn’t seen him bruised and battered before. He changed pants and tossed his discarded clothing into the bathtub, where they would be out of the way.

Upon walking back into the living room, he saw Anxiety, sitting at the counter between the kitchen and living room and looking at him with genuine alarm. Crap. He’d forgotten about Anxiety.

“I thought you looked bad before–” Anxiety started.

“Shut up,” Roman said, flopping onto the couch, where he promptly passed out.

This did not make Anxiety any less alarmed, but Patton just covered Roman with a blanket and said, “Don’t worry, kiddo. He’s usually like this when he’s hurting.”

Before Anxiety could say anything, Logan popped up. “We’ve been gone for only twenty-two hours,” he said. “Thomas was sleeping for most of them, but not all, so it appears that he can function at least a bit without us influencing him.”

“Twenty-two hours is a bit long, but still in the range of typical time we spend in the bottles,” Patton said.

“Last time we were gone for four days, though,” Anxiety said.

“Yeah, I can’t help you there, buddy. It’s never happened before, I don’t know why it did.”

“Wait, when was this?” Logan asked.

“During the time Roman said they were in the Nightmare realm,” Patton said.

Logan looked to Anxiety for confirmation. He nodded. Logan looked confused. “Why would you two lie to us though? Do you not trust us?”

“We just spent four days in a bottle that got bigger or smaller depending on my emotional state. Seems like a pretty interesting little  _experiment,_  doesn’t it?”

It clicked. “You thought I invented the bottles…to see how you would react in them? Oh, Anxiety, I would never make anything to hurt or endanger any of you. Patton may be the one who embodies Thomas’s morals, but that does not mean that I am devoid of them!”

“Yeah, I know,” Anxiety said. “But I had no idea what was going on, and at first I thought it was Roman, so when it wasn’t, the only other options were you, Thomas, or Patton. Patton’s the most unlikely of any of us to cause harm, even unintentionally, so then it’s just you and Thomas, both of whom were  _right there_  when we got out. I panicked and Roman covered for me. Of course, now that we know that it’s not any of us, that means it’s definitely Thomas, which is almost  _more_  concerning, especially considering that he has a different trap for each of us.”

“There’s still not enough evidence to conclude that it’s ‘definitely Thomas.’ It’s possible that it’s a self-defense mechanism that created itself in order to keep any one of us from having too much influence. It might also be a result of one or more of our parts of the mindscape running amok. Perhaps the Nightmare Realm and the Fairytale Realm have a boundary where they poorly react to each other.”

“So it’s my fault?”

“I did not say that. As Patton said earlier, it might also be ‘the column in the middle of all of us,’ and serve some sort of protective function. The point is, all of this is speculation and without further evidence, such speculation is pointless.” Logan turned to Patton. “Is there any possibility that you might have written down anything related to these traps?”

“I don’t think so, but I can look,” Patton said. He hurried up the stairs to parts unknown.

“I don’t suppose you have any information about them?” Logan asked Anxiety. “Patton said you forget every time.”

Anxiety pushed his right sleeve up to expose an arm covered in notes. “I wrote down everything I know about the last couple times. Anything before that…” he shrugged. “…and if I knew anything at any point in the past and wrote it down, the Fears and Insecurities have probably eaten it by now.”

“You should take care of those things,” Logan said.

“Well I could dump them at your house,” Anxiety said back, glaring. Logan glared back, but refused to get off topic. There were more important things to do right now.

“I’m going to go get a whiteboard, so we can consolidate the data,” Logan said. He snapped out.

Anxiety sighed and rested his head on the counter. Now it was just him and the sleeping Prince.

“Heya, Cuz.”

…And Patton’s children, who he had forgotten about. “I’m not your cousin,” he said, automatically.

“Yeah, well, whatever,” the young teen said. For all he tried, he could not remember her name. She sat down next to him. “Hey guess what?”

“What?”

“Guess.”

“You and your boyfriend broke up.” Anxiety had nothing else to go on. He was rarely at Patton’s house. Her boyfriend was the only thing she’d talked about last time.

“Oh please, that was  _ages_  ago. Guess again.”

“I’m not good at guessing. Just tell me.”

She sighed. “ _Fiiiine_. I got to go to that white room place you and Dad and the others always hang out in. Me and Jimothy got to battle a monster teacher before Princey sent us home.”

Anxiety picked his head up and looked at her in disbelief. “…What?”

“Oh yeah, it was really fun. Like, there was this shadow demon thing that was like, possessing one of the subs from school, and I got to use a sword, and Princey banished us but I know I would have won. Jimothy was useless though.”

“And why were you there, exactly?”

“Dunno. Princey said something about daydreams, but it was boring and I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Does your Dad know about this?” Anxiety asked, wondering why she was telling him this.

“No, and you’re not gonna tell him.”

“I’m not?”

“You can’t! Dad’ll never let us out of the suburbs again!” Anxiety briefly considered doing it out of spite, but shrugged that impulse off. He had no reason to cause family drama. He wasn’t even part of the family.

The kid took his silence for assent and changed the subject. “I think Professor Logan ships you and Princey.”

Logan popped in, with two large, rolling whiteboards, instead of just one. “I have returned,” he called out.

The kid smirked, and mumbled, “Speak of the devil,” then ran off. Anxiety was confused by the entire exchange. Patton’s family was weird. They got weirder every time he visited.

“Making friends?” Logan asked.

“No,” Anxiety said.

“Pity. Rebecca’s a nice girl. I would think that you two would get on like a house on fire.”

“I feel like those two statements are contradictory.”

“Not at all. You wouldn’t believe how often she talks about her ‘favorite older cousin’ in my physics class.”

“Yeah? Who’s that?”

Logan looked like he couldn’t believe Anxiety had just said that. “…You. She was talking about you.”

“But I’m not related.”

“Patton considers us all part of a family, and therefore so does his children.”

“Right, so, so, what? Does that make you and Patton the gay dads, and then Roman’s like, uh, the vodka aunt, and I’m the emo cousin or something?”

Logan’s cheeks flushed. “Patton and I  _aren’t_  dating,” he said.

“Really? I have several pages of evidence that say otherwise.”

Logan’s eyebrows shot up, and then he realized that Anxiety was teasing him about earlier. He threw a marker at Anxiety, who ducked, laughing. “Asshole,” Logan muttered.

“Real mature, Teach.”

“We were going to consolidate all of our available data, were we not? Let’s stay on track.”

Logan pulled out his notebook and started transferring notes to a whiteboard. Anxiety got the other whiteboard marker from where it had landed in the kitchen and started doing the same thing with the notes on his arm.

Logan glanced over at Anxiety’s writing. “Wow,” he said.

“What?”

“I can barely read that, and I’m a teacher.”

“You know what? The English language wasn’t designed for lefties.”

“I’m left-handed too, and I write perfectly legibly.”

“You write in all capital letters.”

“And it is legible, therefore your comment does not strengthen your argument. The real question is: why is your handwriting so much worse on the whiteboard than your arm?”

“I’m trying to make the letters not erase. I can’t put my hand on the board. Also, this is bigger than I ever write normally.”

“…Have you never written on a whiteboard before?”

“Why would I have?”

Logan “hmmm”ed but didn’t respond. He supposed that made sense. The Fears and Insecurities didn’t seem like the type of creatures that would enjoy free body diagrams.

He left Anxiety to his notes, and on the other whiteboard, he drew a diagram of each of the other traps, with everything he had observed about them underneath. There wasn’t much, though that made sense since they had only encountered the other traps for a short amount of time, and only once. Plus, the other traps only worked on one or two people, as opposed to all four of them. He also added a section for the grayspace itself.

“I’m back!” Patton said, coming down the stairs. “I didn’t find anything except this paper that I can’t read. It’s not mine or the kids’ handwriting though, so I thought it might be important.”

Anxiety took the paper from him. “This is my handwriting,” he said, confused. He scanned through the page. “I don’t remember writing this though…it talks about the bottles…but it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know.”

“It does, though, doesn’t it?” Logan said. The other two looked at him blankly. “It tells us that at one point, Anxiety knew about the bottles and remembered what happened after he escaped.” He took the paper, reading it through. Once he was finished, he added, “Also, if you read this, it mentions that  _Patton_  was the one who broke the bottle and didn’t remember anything afterwards. Thus, it can be theorized that there is a correlation between breaking the bottle and forgetting the whole event, though without more data it will remain only a theory.”

“Wait, really?” Anxiety asked, snatching the paper back and reading it over. “…huh.”

“Patton, would you read over our notes and determine if there’s anything that we overlooked or that you noticed in addition to these?” Logan asked.

“Sure,” Patton said. He started with the whiteboard for the bottles, and immediately turned back. “I can’t read half of these notes, though.”

“It is  _not_  that bad!” Anxiety said.

“It  _is_  that bad, kiddo. Who taught you to write?” Patton asked, with actual concern.

“You could read my handwriting just fine in the bottles!”

“Yes, but it was legible in the bottles,” Patton said.

“Also, for the most part, it was me reading it,” Logan said. “Start with the other whiteboard, Patton. I’ll rewrite the notes over here.”

Patton went to the other whiteboard. “I notice you have the ‘cube’ and ‘bear trap’ sections empty except for their pictures,” he said immediately.

“That is because I know nothing about them.”

“Well the bear trap snapped at you when it got too close,” Patton said. “You didn’t even set it off, it just jumped up and tried to bite you.”

Anxiety handed Patton the other whiteboard marker. “They also went off when I put a Seed of Doubt on the trigger,” he said. “But they don’t snap around you or me. Dunno about Roman, though, since he didn’t get anywhere near them.”

“The cube things didn’t react at all,” Patton said, starting to write underneath the ‘bear trap’ category. “Of course, we didn’t really go near them, but they didn’t do  _anything_.”

“Perhaps they aren’t traps,” Logan said. “We don’t know for certain that–”

“LOGIC!”

Logan vanished, along with his marker, called away by Thomas. Patton and Anxiety glanced at each other nervously, but only for a second.

“MORALITY!”

Patton and his marker vanished too. Anxiety sighed irritably. Now he couldn’t even carry on without them.

“ROMAN!”

Roman didn’t vanish. He barely even moved, except to stir a bit and say, “Go away, Thomas.”

There was silence for a moment, and then, “ROMAN?”

All Roman did was groan irritably.

Anxiety snapped into Thomas’s living room before he was called, worried that Logan and Patton would screw things up.

“Anxiety!” Thomas said, surprised. “I was just about to call you.”

“What do you want, Sanders?” Anxiety asked irritably.

“Well, first, I would like to know where Roman is.”

“Oh, I think you’ve had quite enough of his influence for now. Remember yesterday?” Technically, that didn’t answer the question, but Anxiety didn’t want him to know they had all been conspiring together at Patton’s house.

“Yeah, that kinda leads me to my next question: What’s been  _going on_ lately? It feels like my entire brain has been conspiring against me! What is up with you guys?”

The three traits looked at each other. Logan couldn’t lie; his existence was based on facts and logic, and lying was a direct contradiction of both of those. Patton couldn’t lie either; lying was immoral and he simply couldn’t do it. Anxiety could lie, but he was always too afraid of getting caught to focus on doing it convincingly.

“Us? Conspiring against  _you?_ ” Anxiety asked.

“Yes!” Thomas said.

“Are you sure it isn’t the other way around?” Anxiety asked accusingly.

“Yes,” Thomas said. “Wait, what? Why would I be conspiring against you? You’re a part of me!”

“Sure, but maybe you don’t want us anymore. Maybe we’re  _villains_  to you. Maybe you feel the need to trap us, lock us away.”

“Look, if this is about the last video–”

“Maybe you feel the need to  _bottle_  your emotions.”

“Yeah, I sure have been doing that a lot lately. Wait, why did you say it like that?”

“Why do you  _think,_  Thomas?” Anxiety asked. He was losing control of this. Gosh, he did not plan this out well. Or at all.

“Does me bottling things up affect Patton?”

“He’s  _not_  the only–” Wait. Crap. This was not what he wanted to happen. “Dammit, Sanders!”

“Wait, does it affect you  _too?_  Both of you?”

Well, so much for not confronting Thomas about this.

“It would appear that when you get upset, you  _literally_  bottle up your emotions,” Logan explained. “And sometimes the rest of us with them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I was trapped in a stupid champagne bottle with Princey for  _four days_ , Thomas!” The game was up. Might as well get all his frustration out with it.

Roman finally popped in, yawning. “You called?”

Thomas looked horrified. “What  _happened_  to you?”

Roman squinted uncomprehendingly. “What?” Then it clicked. “Oh.” He popped out, and popped in moments later, wearing a stainless tunic, and still wearing Patton’s pants. “Better?”

“No, not better! You looked like you went through the apocalypse!”

“You know, my appearance has been insulted all day! Not once has anyone called me pretty or handsome, it’s all ‘disaster,’ ‘trainwreck,’ ‘apocalypse!’”

“You look pretty,” Anxiety said, and as Roman turned to him in delight, he added, “…awful.”

“I  _do not_  like you!”

“Guys! Not helpful!” Thomas said. “Roman, what happened to you?”

“I almost died in a heroic attempt to save Logic. No biggie,” Roman said.

“Don’t be dramatic,” Anxiety said. “Patton said the traps won’t kill us.”

“The  _bottles_  won’t kill  _you!_  I am made of hopes and dreams! I’m very certain that that could have killed me!”

“Boys!” Patton snapped. Both of them looked at him. “Calm down. You’re scaring Thomas.”

“Good,” Anxiety said. “After everything we’ve been through for the past few days, he deserves it.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on but I want to fix it guys!” Thomas said. “Please, just help me understand!”

“Perhaps it would be best just to show him?” Logan asked.

“But he’s not a shapeshifter!” Anxiety said. “Who knows what might happen?”

“Well, he’s managed to summon us out of the grayscape,” Roman said. “Surely we could do the same for him, especially if we all work together.”

“Besides, he’s not part of the mind,” Patton said. “He’s a real person in the real world. I don’t think he  _can_  be trapped in there.”

“Ever heard the phrase ‘trapped in your own mind?’” Anxiety said. “What if we can’t get him out? Something bad could happen!”

Roman was about to tell him how ridiculous he was being, but he saw Anxiety’s face. Genuine worry. He realized this wasn’t just idle, anxious complaining.

“You have a point,” he conceded.

“No, don’t go to his side,” Logan said. “He’s being illogical!”

“Is he?” Roman said. “We, while being the cores of Thomas, are not  _all_ of Thomas. Even combined, it’s possible that we won’t have the power to summon him back. Also, consider how many other phrases have turned literal in the grayspace. ‘Bottled emotions,’ ‘Seeds of Doubt,’ uh, ‘creative block,’ and…honestly I got nothing for the bear traps, but I’m sure it’s something. It’s not unreasonable to think that Thomas could be trapped inside his own mind within the grayspace.”

Patton made a worried noise that Logan knew meant that Roman had convinced him.

“All right,” Logan said. “What do you propose we do instead?”

There was silence for a moment. Then Anxiety said, “We could show him the whiteboards. That would work, wouldn’t it? Everything we know about everything is there already.”

Logan thought about it for a moment. “Acceptable,” he said, and snapped.

Suddenly, the five of them were in Patton’s house. “Whoa,” Thomas said. “This looks like my dream house.”

“It is your dream house,” Roman said. “Well, as far as your realistic, domestic dreams go.”

“Sit down, Thomas,” Logan said, gesturing to the couch. Thomas sat down. Logan wheeled the whiteboards in front of the TV.

Logan was the one who primarily did the talking, with all of the others–who were scattered across the living room furniture–chipping in whenever they felt necessary. Roman chipped in a lot, especially when they got to the non-bottles board. He’d been asleep during the original note-taking, but he’d experienced the most inside the grayspace, since he’d had to traverse it alone and had wandered all over trying to find them.

Once they were finally finished, Thomas said, “Okay, I see what you guys are nervous about, but I just don’t know how to fix it. Here and the mind palace that Roman created are the only actual places within my mind that I’ve ever been, and I certainly don’t know how to manipulate it. I really want to help, but I’m not sure what I can do.”

“Just try,” Roman said.

“Yeah, kiddo!” Patton said. “Just try not to bottle us up or keep us down anymore, okay?”

“ _Any_  of us,” Anxiety said forcefully.

Thomas nodded solemnly. “I’ll do my best,” he said. “I promise.”

“That is acceptable,” Logan said.

~

As Roman was getting ready to spar one day, he realized that he’d misplaced his shield. He looked all over the armory for it. Then he remembered where he put it.

He summoned himself into the grayspace, curious to see if it was still there. Surprisingly, it was. He picked up his shield from where it still lay against the wall, and turned around.

He saw nothing.

Curious, he walked further away from the wall, confident that he could escape from anywhere in the room. The only things he found were the bear traps. Those pointless, pointless bear traps. They were everywhere, probably the same amount as what had been when there were other traps as well, but they seemed more plentiful when compared to the absence of the other traps.

He made it to the stairs, and out of curiosity, climbed up. Once he reached the top, he looked around. Up here, there were still a few bottles, a few dandelion heads, one block trap. And so many bear traps. However, there were not as many as there had been, and none of them looked like they had been used in a long time. It seemed that Thomas really had been trying to make sure that none of them got trapped anymore.

Roman smiled, changed into Terrence, and popped out.

It was acceptable.


End file.
